


A Second Reckoning of Sorts

by thereweregiants



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, No idea what to tag this as, Overwatch Recall, Post-Fall of Overwatch, Recovery, i guess, mostly epistolary on Jesse's side
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-03
Updated: 2019-01-03
Packaged: 2019-10-03 11:53:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17283578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thereweregiants/pseuds/thereweregiants
Summary: In a drop box belonging to an organization that doesn't exist any more, postcards show up addressed to a dead man.The dead man still picks them up.





	A Second Reckoning of Sorts

**Author's Note:**

> i wanted something soft and sweet and fluffy for the new year  
> pretty much missed on all counts. it's quiet, tho  
> (if you know how to write fluffy Reaper that keeps canon please let me know because I have no fuckin idea how)  
> played a lil fast and loose with the timeline because what the hell even is OW lore
> 
> title from Metric's [Speed the Collapse](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXa5tspPTHI)  
> soundtrack to writing was mostly Ludovico Einaudi's Nightbook

Gabe watches the Orca take off with fingernail marks still burning down his back. His mouth is sore and there are stinging patches on his collarbone where Jesse tried to mark his territory one last time. They’d spent long hours over the past weeks talking about how Blackwatch was so very far from what Gabe had started it as, how the group full of killers has died off itself with barely a whimper. Gabe is stuck fast, Gabe can’t go anywhere but Jesse - oh Jesse, he can escape. He can finally be someone of his own choosing.

Jesse had pressed him down into the bed with firm hands and a decisive set to his jaw. “I’m leavin’ this place, this broken place,” he’d whispered into Gabe’s mouth. “I’m not leavin’ you.”

But he left as his agent and he left as his lover, and now Gabe is blankly staring at a ship rise into the air with most of his emotions inside of it. He tongues the inside of his lip, where Jesse had kissed him so hard that his teeth split the flesh. The taste brings him back to himself, makes it real. Jesse and blood are wrapped around each other in his brain, whether it’s the aching bone-deep trauma of a failed mission, the pain-free adrenaline-soaked injuries of a successful one, or the biting marks in bed that come after either.

“Gabriel, your lip,” comes Ana’s voice from next to him. “You’re bleeding.”

“Yeah,” Gabe says, eyes locked on the ship that disappears into the atmosphere. “Yeah, I am.”

-x-x-x-x-x-

The notification arrives in his inbox two months after Jesse leaves. Blackwatch owns dead drops all over the world - monitored boxes in small anonymous towns that are easy driving distance from major airports. Gabe frowns to see the message - there’s no Blackwatch left, so who the hell is using a Blackwatch-assigned PO box in nowhere, USA?

Nowhere, USA turns out to be the unimportant-to-the-world-at-large small city of New Britain, Connecticut. Gabe forgets about it for awhile until a mission in NYC that requires him to leave from the military airport in northern Connecticut, and he swings over on the way to check it out. It’s an unassuming post office, the same as anywhere else in the United States. He unlocks the box with a fingerprint, and pulls out...a postcard.

It’s cheerful, all cartoon cacti and rolling tumbleweeds, a smiling sun with sunglasses saying “Route 66! Wish you were here!” Gabe feels a pain in his chest, some vital organ that a ghost from his past decided to yank on without his permission. He flips the card over, already expecting the neat block capitals in heavy, dark pen.

 

_It’s hot here, but the bed’s cold at night._

_Deadlock’s still around and kicking, Lord knows how. Think I saw Ashe at a distance once, didn’t want to get close enough to check._

_Been stuffing myself with all that good food I’ve been missing for fifteen years. Pretty sure if you cut me at this point I’d bleed salsa verde._

_Watch your back, stay alive, stay safe._

_I need you to be safe._

 

Gabe stares at it until the words blur through his dry eyes. It’s more than he expected, and yet not enough. He wishes he’d never seen it for a hot minute of rage, yelling at Jesse in his head that this just made things worse, just made it more difficult. It would have been so much easier for them to part in anger, to make a clean break of it. Instead there were soft touches and farewell kisses pressed to sweat-damp flesh, knowing all the while that their profession made it likely that they’d never see each other again.

He slips the postcard in a jacket pocket, carries it next to his chest all the way back to Switzerland.

It gets carefully tucked into the edge of a picture frame in Gabe’s office, and burns to a fine ash in the explosion a week later.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Gabe doesn’t look at his Blackwatch inbox for more than a year because there’s no Blackwatch.

There’s no Gabe.

Instead there’s a roiling ball of smoke that streams its way away from the decimated headquarters and broken bodies, that settles itself in a cave in the foothills of Mount Säntis. The smoke pulls itself together over the course of days, of weeks. One day there’s the sound of footsteps, and a helmeted head with mismatched eyes and a tracking device in hand pokes its way around the rocky side wall.

“There you are,” Moira says with a satisfied air about her, and the being that was once Gabriel Reyes is whisked off to a Talon lab.

He’s…something else now. Even Moira isn’t sure what he is, and she had a hand in it. It’s part SEP gone wrong, part Moira’s experimentation that had been disguised as helping Gabe out, part something that’s intrinsic to his former body. They map out every part of him, the skin gone greyish, the irises gone red, the too-sharp teeth, the neverending smoke. They cut him over and over, watching to see exactly how fast he heals now. It doesn’t bother him, he doesn’t feel pain the same way anymore.

Talon dresses him in black and puts a helmet on him and calls him the Reaper. He shows emotion for the first time, the first reaction to anything they’ve done to him. He rips the outfit off, stalks off to the R&D lab with the shreds clenched in one hand. His handlers don’t do anything but follow him, curious to see what he’s up to.

Reaper spends a week in the lab, sewing and clamping and cutting. He speaks for the first time, terrifying some junior goon with his smokey growl that demands ten yards of black full grain pigmented leather and double that amount of woven Kevlar. He devotes two full days to a horse skull and a die grinder, ending up with a mask of an almost-familiar shape that Moira gives a long assessing look. She sits back as he assembles himself piece by piece, taking in the ammo belts and boots and hood that have barely changed and the everything else that is a new creature.

Walking around him, Moira’s mouth turns up in something that only nightmares would call a smile. She leans close and murmurs in Reaper’s ear, telling him about all the beautiful wreckage he is going to cause, all the revenge he can get. Reaper doesn’t move, letting her words fill the space in his head that’s been empty since his world disappeared in fire and smoke.

-x-x-x-x-x-

A memory stick flies through the air, and Reaper catches it without looking. “What’s this?”

“Something of possible use,” comes a low rumble as massive shoulders shrug. “There’s an upstart hacker that’s quietly making a name for herself. We thought this might be a good test of her abilities.”

Reaper tilts his head, and though his face is hidden as usual behind his mask, Doomfist knows he’s glowering at him underneath. “Again. What’s this.”

“Some of Blackwatch’s old records, we’re not sure what all is there. Go through them, see if there’s anything that might be helpful. If she did her job right we might hire her to break into the former Watchpoints, see what she can get.”

Reaper gives a single nod, whisking out of the room in a streamer of smoke. He solidifies in his quarters, a barebones steel-walled room with nothing to indicate that anyone lives there. He settles in the chair, plugging the memory stick into the desk. An interface that he hasn’t set eyes on in well over a year pops up, and Reaper absently removes his mask so he can see better. Data streams by on the projected screen, reflecting and giving color to greyed skin.

He taps a button, and a login prompt pops up. Reaper never moves without the utmost confidence and grace, but he’s hesitant now as he types ‘reyesg’ into the username field. He stares at the blinking cursor in the password box, clawed fingers flexing in midair. He hits a few keys, then deletes the characters. Long minutes are spent without moving, until the screen is wiped with a vicious swipe through the air. The mask is reattached and the room is empty a moment later.

When Reaper wakes the next morning, his eyes snap open and he spends a minute staring at the blackness in front of him. His room has no windows but he knows that it’s early. Rising, he opens the computer screen back up with a wave. The login prompt is still blinking. Reaper closes his eyes, cracks the knuckles on his bare hands, and sets his fingers to the keyboard. They waver for a moment, then muscle memory finally kicks in and a twenty digit mishmash of letters and symbols pours out onto the screen as his fingers type unerringly. He hits the enter key without thinking, and the computer says in a warm voice “Greetings, Commander Reyes.”

He hits the mute button, not wanting to hear anything the system has to say to him. Everything is just as it was when he logged in the day of the explosion - his calendar listing a date that’s long gone by, the music player paused partway through a song, a half-composed email to Jack that was abandoned mid-sentence when the emergency klaxons went off. He clicks out of the message, and blinks in surprise to see new notifications in his inbox.

Everyone who knows this email address is dead or thinks that Reyes is dead, so who the hell is messaging him? Four messages are there, all from the same sender. Reaper clicks on one, and cocks his head. It’s an automated notification from a Blackwatch dead drop, the one in Connecticut. The other three messages are identical. Reaper spends a long minute looking over the message before deleting it and the others, and starts to dig through the files.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Some months later Reaper stands at the edge of the water that holds the nuclear reactor, the beautiful blue of Cerenkov radiation reflecting off of his mask and armor. After a great deal of experimentation they hadn’t found an upper limit for the emissions that Reaper could handle, so he is usually sent to supervise any kind of mission like this. He watches the Hazmat-suited Talon agents bundle up the fuel rods, briefly closing his eyes in consternation as one of them accidentally drops an end on his foot. The poor idiot would likely be dead in a week, given the size of the rip in his shoe cover.

Slipping outside, Reaper checks with the driver as the bundles are loaded into the truck. New York would be struggling with their power for a bit, but Indian Point had three reactors and they were only really messing with one. The Wall Street fat cats could survive without steady air conditioning for a few days.

“Sir, are you going to be accompanying us back to base?” Some kid whose name Reaper has already forgotten is nominally in charge of the operation under Reaper’s supervision, and is practically cowering as he asks the question.

“No.” Not feeling the need to elaborate, Reaper vanishes in a stream of smoke, rematerializing next to the motorcycle he’d stashed next to the main building. He slings a leg over, speeding away before any other idiots can bother him.

An hour later, Reaper parks his bike in a copse of trees. It’s three in the morning in the suburbs, no one is around but he’s still stealthy as he approaches the post office. The weather stripping has peeled away a bit at the bottom of the locked front door, and it’s enough room for him to get in. Only a quarter inch of clearance needed - just one more thing that Reaper and cockroaches have in common.

Standing in front of the PO box, Reaper pulls off a glove. He stares at his hand a moment. How much had he changed? Would it still read his fingerprint? He honestly hadn’t checked to see if he even had fingerprints still. Pressing a careful finger, there’s a clink and the small door swings open. There are perhaps a half-dozen pieces of thick paper there, and Reaper takes them all without looking and tucks them into an inner pocket of his coat. He doesn’t have time to examine them, there’s a ship leaving out of Hartford that he needs to be on without anyone seeing him.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Reaper isn’t able to actually look at the cards for a few days. He’d slipped them into a slit he’d carefully clawed in the side of his thin mattress, knowing he didn’t want anyone aware they existed. There was a sudden sense memory of having done this before, in army barracks with a friend’s bright blue eyes crinkling up in laughter as they hid their contraband. He shakes the memory off. It’s not often that he remembers much of who he was before. He’s aware of it, of who he was to the world and what he did to earn his place in it, but it’s all static below the silence. Meaningless blips in his current existence of quiet interrupted by bouts of intense violence.

Late in the evening when the chances of being interrupted by Moira needing one more test result or Doomfist needing him to tickle someone’s larynx with his claws are at their lowest, he pulls the cards out. There are five - another one must have arrived since the last time he looked at the inbox.

He looks at the postmarks first, arranging them in order by date. The first one is an artistic rendering of a familiar skyline, “Greetings from beautiful Los Angeles!” in script across the top. Flipping it over reveals the same block caps handwriting as before.

 

_Was headed up the coast, decided to see where lil Gabi spent his childhood._

_Ended up at a Lakers game, cheered for the other team just on principle. If you felt mysteriously annoyed for no reason lately, now you know why._

_Went to the big observatory, they had a fancy night show. Looked up at the stars, wondered where you were and if you could see the same ones._

_Enough of the sentimentality, there’s some questionable street food calling my name._

_Be careful. Be safe._

 

Reaper sets the card aside carefully, separating the next one out delicately with his claws. This card has mountains on it, text on the bottom reading “Glacier Bay National Park”.

 

_I’m sending this to a ghost, I guess._

_Bought the card before I saw the news, reception up here is pretty bad so I didn’t find out for a day._

_I want to fucking shoot something, Gabe, I want some goddamn revenge. But I don’t know who to go after._

_They say that it was you and Jack, but I know that’s not true. You and I know the shit the media’s been saying for years about us, I’m sure this is just more of the same._

_I want to run but I don’t know where to run to. I came up here to get out into wilderness I hadn’t seen before, maybe see a bear or something, but it still feels like it’s all pressing in on me._

_You’re never going to see this so I’m not sure why I’m writing._

(there is a line written and then scratched out, harshly enough that it nearly goes through the cardstock)

_I’m so fucking sorry Gabe. It should never have ended like this._

 

The next card is from a good six months later and has nothing on the back except the dead drop’s address. The front shows a rocky cliff tumbling into the sea, with “Punta de Estaca de Bares” in a small font at the top. Reaper looks at the card steadily until a few buried memories float to the surface. The tiny town was at the very tip of Spain, and Gabe and Jesse had gone there for...some type of anniversary or celebration, Reaper can’t quite grasp the memory.

It had rained the entire time, but it hadn’t stopped them from exploring ruins and hiking trails and swimming in the shockingly cold Bay of Biscay. The remainder of the trip was leisurely meals and enough time in bed that Gabe had wondered aloud why they’d even bothered going abroad at all if all they were going to look at were the walls around them and each other.

Reaper shakes off the unfamiliar feeling of contentment and flips to the next card. It’s generic, some bland New York City card likely picked up in an airport. On the back a label is taped down, the wrapper from a package of chocolate chip cookies.

 

_best cookies ive ever had_

_youd kill for em_

_sorry drunk_

_happy bday_

 

The last card is dated from just a week or two ago. It’s a night photograph of thousands of lanterns shining off of intricately carved buildings, a caption of “जयपुर” at the side.

 

_I meant to write something on the anniversary but I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t think about a year without you in the world._

_It’s Diwali here in Jaipur. You’d like it. More lights than you can count, everyone celebrating the victory of light over darkness and all that shit you’d make fun of but secretly love._

_It’s getting easier, waking up and knowing you’re gone._

_I hate that._

 

Reaper puts the cards back in order, squaring the edges. He pulls the sheet up, slips them back into the slit in the mattress. Sleep is a long time coming that night, thoughts of floating lights and crashing waves twisting through his head.

When he finally falls asleep, for the first time since his rebirth - Reaper dreams.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Time passes. Reaper kills for Talon. He doesn’t mind it, mostly. There’s no Overwatch anymore - they’re not fighting any good guys, just other morally corrupt organizations that are battling for the same turf, the same weapons. After a while, though, Reaper starts to go out on his own. He hunts down the hacker that Doomfist had recruited and gets her to find old Overwatch and Blackwatch records, buried in places that only the man who was once Reyes would know about.

They’re sitting in the situation room of an abandoned Watchpoint in La Paz, Sombra perched on a crate and swinging her legs as Reaper flicks through the screen to see if the information he needs is there.

“This would have been so much easier if you just told me what you wanted and let me send -”

“Don’t send any of this information. Not over any channels.”

Sombra rolls her eyes. “Doomfist has assured me that your security -”

“Don’t tell Doomfist about this. This isn’t for Talon.”

Sombra’s legs stop swinging, and he can feel her focus on him. “Really, now. I’ll let the giving me orders and interrupting me constantly go, because now I’m interested.”

“Your only interest should be in what I’m paying you. Which is far too much.”

“Seriously, _pelotudo_? If you think you can get this information yourself, I’ll take my things and leave.”

Reaper sighs in annoyance, not taking his eyes off of the screen. “I’m...sorry.”

“Don’t pull something, there.” The words and the amused warmth in her voice tug at something inside Reaper, and he inexplicably expects a deeper timbre, one with a velvety accent that should have disappeared after so many years abroad but was stubbornly held on to. Ignoring the inner distraction, he peers at the screen.

“This is what I need. Transfer it over.” He holds a memory stick out to Sombra.

She glances at the list of names and the paragraphs of information after them that describe their last known locations and possible boltholes. “Should I assume that none of those people are going to be walking around for much longer?”

Reaper doesn’t answer, a black statue leaning against a desk.

“Who are these people, anyways?”

“Nobody any more.” Sombra doesn’t know who Reaper was. She certainly doesn’t know about how he’s carefully gone through the information gathered for both Talon and himself over the past year, and figured it out. Figured out how Blackwatch was brought down from within, double agents hired by Null Sector and Talon themselves, who had banded together at the chance to take down their mutual enemy.

Reaper belongs to Talon, but he has older scores to settle.

His tablet goes off with a quiet buzz, and he glances at it before tapping rapidly at the screen. “Sombra. Bring up a news site.”

She does, sighing in exaggerated annoyance all the while, and the headline is splashed across the screen: “Doomfist Arrested and Jailed.” There’s video of Doomfist being led away in cuffs, Winston holding his gauntlet with Oxton and Genji beside him. They look battered but cheerful, all in unfamiliar outfits. Genji wouldn’t be recognizable at all were it not for his body language and the katana, not a bit of skin showing. “Is Overwatch reforming?” asks a subheadline, and Reaper asks the same question in his head.

He barely listens to Sombra as she complains about payment and contracts. “Don’t worry about money. I’ll make sure you get paid.” He zooms in a bit, enlarging the picture.

Sombra looks at him, watches his mask as he faces the screen. “Do you know them, Reaper? Who are they to you?” He doesn’t answer, just shuts the computer down with a wave and pulls the memory stick out.

Sharp eyes that are used to peeling apart code don’t miss much, and Sombra flicks her hair out of her face. “Maybe the question is, who were you to them?”

He ignores her and vanishes into threads of black smoke, leaving her alone in the dark room.

-x-x-x-x-x-

From La Paz Reaper takes a plane, then a hypertrain, then steals a motorcycle, ending up in New Britain just a half dozen hours after leaving Sombra. Slipping into the post office is old hat, he’s done it a half dozen times by now. Opening the box, he pulls out a card. Just one this time. He puts it in a pocket and slips out as easy as he came in.

There’s enough light on the plane that he can see, even in the cargo compartment that he’s settled in. He tugs the card out, making sure it’s not bent. It’s thick, textured paper with a painting on it of a mountain and icy plains, faintly rendered in blue and grey. Reaper takes his mask off to look closely and can see the paint strokes - it’s hand painted. Small, neat letters in ink at the bottom says “Mount Erebus, Ross Island.” He turns the card over.

 

_Another year and I’m still writing to you. Dunno what that says about me. Or about you._

_I’m at McMurdo Station in Antarctica. They needed some muscle, Talon forces thinking of taking their scientists. Only continent I hadn’t been to, so I said yes._

_I thought I knew isolation, what it’s like to be alone. Remember when we were out in Siberia that one month? When you and me were the only people around for a hundred miles? It’s like that but worse. Because there’s no eventual civilization. There’s no you._

_Apparently there’s an abandoned Ecopoint around here, might see if I can hike to it but the storms are pretty bad supposedly._

_Did you know Antarctica hires artists? Seriously. They get grants. One of the current ones is a little slip of a girl, a painter. If Lena ever calmed down, they’d be pretty similar. She painted this card, actually. You’d think there’d be nothing to paint, just leave a blank white canvas and call it a day. She says though that once you take your time to look, it’s not white at all. It’s a thousand shades of blue and grey._

_Still miss you. Hope you’re not making fun of me in the afterlife for all of this._

 

Reaper carefully tucks the card away in a pocket on his chest armor. When he gets back it will join the others - after that first half dozen they’d slowed down, around one or two a year. Usually around the date of the explosion or what Jesse had laughingly referred to as their anniversary, when Gabe had lost patience at the years of Jesse’s flirting, slammed him against a wall, and asked him if he meant it. (Gabe had always thought their anniversary should be the day Gabe invited Jesse to his strike team. They just ended up celebrating both, most years.)

Every time Reaper gets a card it hurts. Memories and feelings are brought back, everything the trauma that he went through had repressed. It’s not that Reaper doesn’t remember all the years he was Gabriel Reyes, but it’s all at a distance, seen through a gauzy black curtain. He doesn’t really have much of a reaction to it when it’s separated like that.

He’s never sure if it would be better to isolate himself - don’t pick up the cards, don’t look for Overwatch in the news - and stay cold, or expose himself to everything. His hunting down of the Blackwatch traitors was all because of Jesse’s messages, one having been a rant covering the entire back in small print over how it had been years and he still didn’t know who had killed Gabe, who had taken away the home he’d always assumed he’d eventually go back to. It lit a small flame inside of Reaper that’s never quite been extinguished.

Each piece of cheap, thick paper he gets, each paragraph of familiar writing - it reaches in and grabs another glassy shard of long-buried personality and brings it screaming up to the surface.

He fits his mask back on, and lets the rattling of the ship’s hull lull him into an uneasy sleep full of swirling snow and warm laughter.

-x-x-x-x-x-

He’d known Jack was alive, down in his bones. Knew that the world wouldn’t let Gabe survive - for certain meanings of the word - and not have Jack be there too. They had been too tied up in each other for most of four decades, forever stuck in a push and pull relationship that they’d never escape. Getting blown to bits in an explosion wouldn’t stop them.

Reaper had kept his ear to the ground, never telling anyone about who he was looking for or why, but always on the lookout for someone with a backbone of steel doing things that he thought were right. He found him, first plundering old Watchpoints and then tangling with Los Muertos. Reaper hadn’t been sure, not completely, until he saw a video of the girl talking about how the man had saved her. Damnit, Jack. Even after everything, he was still the same protective asshole.

He set the bait, and got a two for one special in return. Not just Jack, but Ana too. Seeing her was a different kind of shock. Reaper was sure that she had survived that mission, the one where Lacroix supposedly killed her. (Whenever he brought it up around her, there was always a twitch in her golden left eye, and he knew that there was some kind of unfinished business there.) He’d thought she’d gotten out, though. Taken herself out of the game the same way she’d kept her daughter out the best she could. He’d assumed she was somewhere up in Vancouver with Sam, keeping chickens or some shit.

Should have known better. You underestimate Ana Amari at your own peril.

The expression on her face when she looked at him was one that would haunt him for awhile. Her and Jack’s hair was white, Jack had god-knew-what under that visor and Ana’s eye was gone, but it was on a different level than what had happened to Reaper. He’s in his quarters now back at the Talon base, and he examines himself in the small bathroom mirror. He never looks in mirrors - with a mask, who cares what your face is like - but he’s doing so now, trying to see what she saw.

He doesn’t age anymore, no white hairs or new wrinkles. His hair is actually darker now, more smoke than hair, really. Same scars as before, even the same facial hair because it all stopped growing after he came back together that first time. Reaper hasn’t shaved in years at this point, can’t even remember how to any more. His color is off - skin greyish, eyes red. Teeth are so very white, just a bit longer and sharper than they should be. That’s really it, though. He looks at himself, looks into his own eyes. Maybe it wasn’t the physical characteristics at all, just...him. The fact that it was him. Maybe that’s horrific enough.

Reaper leaves the bathroom, reaches over to his coat that’s draped over the chair and pulls out the latest card. It’s from Auckland, and has a Maori pattern design covering the front. He flips it over, and frowns. The writing is barely legible, awkwardly shaped letters and lines wavering all over the page.

 

_remember how you made fun of me for shooting with my right and writing with my left_

_not sure which one of us won_

_lost my left arm, don’t have a prosthetic yet so I’m trying to write with my right_

_could be worse, could have to relearn how to shoot_

_gotta tell you I feel like less of a man_

_ha_

_may also be drunk right now_

 

He blinks, looking at the shapes of the letters. Knowing Jesse, it really would have been more traumatic to lose his shooting arm rather than his writing arm. He wonders what he’d look like, now. He’d be...thirty six, if he’s doing his math right. Almost thirty seven.

Reaper does something he rarely attempts, and tries to _remember_. Remember the seventeen year old, all lean muscle and stick-and-poke tattoos and pure attitude under the handcuffs even with his life on the line. Remember the twenty year old, still full of attitude but now honed into a weapon for Blackwatch to use, face shining at getting to join the illustrious Commander Reyes’s strike team. Remember the twenty five year old, writhing under him in bed for the first time, Gabe taking a step forward he could never take back with the man who had grown up and become his right hand without him noticing. Remember Jesse at thirty one, idiotic spurs clinking as he walked away from Gabe up the gangway and out of his life. The right decision, but still the worst one.

He loosens his hand, having clenched it around the card. He smooths it out the best he can, taking off the clawed gloves to try and press it back into shape.

The cards and his broken brain and his monstrous body. They’re all he has left.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Reaper tosses the ridiculous hat onto his desk, feathers flying everywhere. He likes designing, putting together fabric and metal in the most efficient way to protect the flesh beneath. But this, the frilly red coats and the embarrassingly on-the-nose skull mask, not to mention the rococo eyesore that Doomfist wore...it was too much. He still can’t believe they had an actual inner council meeting with what had to be twenty yards of fabric floating around Doomfist’s massive frame.

All of that was besides the point, though. Doomfist was back, after years of being out of commission. Reaper didn’t have to listen to Vialli or Maximilien’s sad little attempts at leading their own splinter factions. Reaper himself could fade into the background - he’d spent enough years as a leader, he was happy to listen to orders for awhile.

Listen to, not follow, of course. He chose what he actually did.

Doomfist could be a pain, but at least the inner council might stop the infighting for a while. Everyone now knew that Overwatch had been recalled, and though Reaper had volunteered none of his own information, Doomfist at least knew that Jack and Ana were back in the game. They were expected to be dead soon, and Reaper was expected to do it.

Again: listen to orders, not follow them. Doomfist had never really experienced Reaper when he didn’t feel like listening. It would be interesting to see how he reacted.

Costume finally discarded, he reached into his mattress, pulled out the latest card. He was unsurprised to see a picture of Gibraltar.

 

_Well, the gang’s all back together. Mostly._

_Some of the Overwatch old guard are here - Torb, Reinhardt, Lena. Angela. It’s only really me and Genji from Blackwatch, but honestly we were pretty much the only ones left alive after it all. A bunch of new people are here, too._

_Genji’s brother showed up. You two would fucking hate each other._

_Winston’s in charge, which is hilarious for a variety of reasons._

_Never spent much time here but it’s all weirdly familiar. HQ is still gone, so I guess this is our home base for awhile._

_It feels wrong._

_Without you. Without Jack and Ana._

_It wasn’t just the logo, it was the people. Without the right people, that...fuck, I don’t know. That determination, that loyalty, we’re just a bunch of dumbasses trying not to shoot each other._

_We’re here, but I don’t know who we are together yet._

 

Reaper sits back. Interesting. For all the good front that Overwatch has put up, it seems like they’re not cohesive. It’s colored by Jesse’s sentimentality, of course, but Overwatch and Blackwatch worked because of their leadership. Jack and Gabe turned them into the smoothly working machines that they were, and everyone knew it - to the point of needing to take the two of them out if they wanted to bring down the organization.

The card was several weeks old, but it looked like Jack and Ana - or what were they now? Soldier 76 and Shrike? Christ - hadn’t yet joined up. Jesse would know them as soon as he saw them, even with the masks, so they must still be keeping a distance.

Interesting.

-x-x-x-x-x-

_They’re fucking alive. Jack and Ana._

_Hiding out, taking down people on the outskirts. Ana’s been hiding since before anything was even disbanded - lost an eye, but still here._

_Goddamnit. They were there, the whole time. Mercenaries, but for the greater good. Like the righteous versions of Reaper._

_I asked them both. About you._

_Because if they lived - if Jack survived that explosion then maybe. Maybe._

_But Ana looked like she was going to cry and said that you were as dead as could be, and Jack just walked away. I guess if anyone would know they would._

_So here I am. Drunk in Mexico on Christmas, still writing to a dead man._

_Fuck you, Gabe, for making me still care all these years later._

 

Reaper knew the day would come, but hadn’t expected Jack or Ana to save him. They probably thought they were doing Jesse a favor - if he ever had to go up against Reaper, it’d be easier for him to take a kill shot if he didn’t know who he’d been. Would Jesse recognize him? He’s not sure.

He traces over Jesse’s handwriting on his name, his new name, and doesn’t know how to feel. Someday he’ll figure it out, and Reaper doesn’t know what he’s going to do then.

-x-x-x-x-x-

A year passes, then two. In the first year that Overwatch came back together, Reaper started in on his own plan. He had the list of agents that he’d taken from Gibraltar just before the recall, and many of the names matched up with the list of double agents that he’d slowly been chipping away at over the past few years. Now that he had full Talon support to go after them, he did with a vengeance.

He runs into Jack, once. Reaper was going after Elrad, some low-level Overwatch punk that used his position in IT to put in keyloggers for Talon and hack the surveillance system. He’d snuck over in the early hours of the morning, snapped the man’s neck on his way to pick up the morning bread in the open air markets of Jerusalem. Looking up at the mouth of the alley at the sound of a soft scuff, he drops the body and pulls out a shotgun as Jack pulls on him in turn.

They stand there in early morning silence, two men with most of a decade and a thousand dead bodies between them.

“You know what he did.” Despite the phrasing, Jack isn’t really asking a question. Reaper inclines his head anyways.

“We’ve been keeping track. You’re not doing scut work for Talon anymore. You figured it out, figured out who broke us apart.”

Reaper is motionless.

Jack keeps the gun on him, finger still on the trigger, but reaches up with his off hand and pulls down the visor and mask. His eyes are as bright as ever, but they’re bracketed by wrinkles, crepey skin covering bone and still-hard muscle. There are a few vicious scars going across his face, and somewhere deep down it bothers Reaper that he doesn’t know how they got there.

“We all have bodies behind us of people that shouldn’t be dead. It’s not too late for any of us, Gabriel. If we took in Genji’s brother, if they took in me and Ana -”

“It’s not the same and you know it. You know what he did.” Reaper nudges the dead Elrad’s body with a foot, his head lolling obscenely. “Everyone else sees a dead Overwatch hero.”

Jack sighs, the same sound he’s been hearing for decades. “Don’t be an idiot, I’m not saying to stroll back in. I’m saying that it’s not a final judgement that you’re forever with Talon, forever a villain. If nothing else the past few years have showed me some shades of grey.”

“Really now,” Reaper laughs. “The great John Francis Morrison, finally seeing that everything isn’t the black and white morality that he’s lorded over me for years.”

Both men have lowered their guns, though Reaper doesn’t remember when they did it. “Fuck off, Gabe,” Jack says with an almost-fond chuff of breath. Reaper makes his gun disappear, tugs Elrad’s body over to the side where it won’t be seen.

“Gabe…” Reaper looks up, having assumed that Jack had left. His gun is holstered, one hand on his visor ready to pull it up. His body language reads the same confidence as ever, but Reaper knows Jack, knows the tightness at the corners of his mouth that means he is going to say something he doesn’t want to say. “Ana and I lied, said you were dead. But he’s going to figure it out sooner or later. He’s smart and you’re not particularly subtle.”

Reaper slowly rises to his feet, the smoke around him getting thicker as his body wants to get far, far away from this conversation.

“He’s not the same, he’s not happy anymore. Still smiles, still flirts with everything, but he’s...in mourning. Even after this long.”

Reaper’s feet disappear, black clouds swirling along the ground.

“Even if you stay with Talon, or do whatever you’re going to do once everyone is dead. You should tell him.”

Reaper flees, up the wall and across the rooftops before he knows what he’s doing. God damnit, Jack Morrison. Even now, even with him, he’s still trying to do what he thinks is the right thing.

-x-x-x-x-x-

_I’m done._

_I tried it out for a few years, but god, I feel like it never came together. Maybe it’s because I came back hoping for what we had, for the camaraderie and support that we used to have, and somewhere deep down I knew we’d never have it._

_Not just because you’re not there, don’t get all smug._

_But we used to have the support of the government, of a hundred governments. Of the people._

_We have that a little now, but we’re missing the glue that held us together. I don’t know what that glue was, but we don’t have it._

_Most people are fine. Winston doesn’t like being in charge but it keeps him out of the action so he’s not that disappointed. I think Jack’s just happy he’s not holding everyone else’s lives in his hands anymore. Fuck knows what Genji’s thinking, he’s doing well and seems to be at peace with himself and his brother, and I think that’s why we don’t connect the same. I don’t have that peace._

_I’m going to stay more straight than I was, try and keep the bounties off._

_Merc work is the way to go, I think. Maybe I could even settle down somewhere, have an actual place to live. I kept traveling before the recall, going to try the settled thing and see how that works._

_Something’s gotta stick._

 

Reaper taps a claw absently on the card. In an odd coincidence, he’s in about the same position as Jesse. Doomfist is dead, having been taking out by - of all people - Sombra and Lacroix. Sombra has always been an equal-opportunity mercenary, and someone in Overwatch must have scraped together the cash to afford her. With his gauntlet hacked and disabled, Lacroix took the shot of a lifetime. She’s been close with Moira lately, Reaper would bet that Moira was the one directing her aim. Hell, for all Reaper knows she was the one that hired Sombra too - Moira’s been chafing against Doomfist for a few years now, and everyone has been waiting for it all to come to a head sooner or later.

With Doomfist gone, Reaper knows that Talon is going to collapse. Moira can’t hold them - he doesn’t think she even really wants to, just wanted to be out from under Doomfist - and Vialli has been dead for years. Maximilien doesn’t get listened to by anyone but omnics, and Korpal has to spend too much time with Vishkar to be effective. None of the newer members have the charisma or the balls to do it.

And Reaper?

Reaper is leaving.

He finished the list. Everyone who betrayed Overwatch and Blackwatch, who betrayed _him_ is dead. After the Overwatch traitors were gone, he went after the ones in Talon, taking down the people in his own organization. Although they’re not his organization any more. He knows how his body works now, he doesn’t need Moira. He socked away a sizable amount of money turning in various bounties over the years, so he doesn’t need Talon for financial backing. He can be...done.

When you’re a resurrected mercenary killer who is semi-solid on the best of days and can’t walk around maskless without giving out heart attacks like they’re Halloween candy, what do you do?

-x-x-x-x-x-

Reaper keeps killing. It’s what he does best, after all, what he is literally made for. He’s more selective, now. Sombra is his biggest source of leads. She knows who he is, who he _was_ , and has almost gently coached him along to the path of…’respectability’ is a stretch, but ‘not killing those that don’t deserve to die’ is a bit wordy.

It’s not like her morals are any better, but she knows what he’s trying to do, distancing himself from Talon. Not the side of good, Reaper will always be Reaper, by reputation if nothing else. But...not necessarily on the side of evil.

He has an apartment, now. Sort of. It’s under layers of assumed names, a basement place in Anchorage where he can be wrapped up all the time and hidden from prying eyes but still be near a major airport and hypertrain station. He doesn’t feel the cold, so he doesn’t even have to keep the heat on in the dead of the Alaskan winter. It’s almost nice, nearly being part of society.

Nearly. It’s not like he has social skills anymore. Or even had much of them in the first place.

Reaper has a job over in Boston, taking out some idiots who are trying to knock over the Federal Reserve Bank there. He ties them up, leaves them dangling like a bunch of carrots over the Fort Point Channel. He leaves the printing plates the goons were after but takes a nice bag stuffed with bills as his fee. It’s not like the Fed can’t spare it.

He swings down by New Britain out of habit, he’s due for another card sooner or later though he hasn’t checked the Blackwatch inbox in a while. He slips inside, opens the box, and takes out...a piece of paper.

It’s torn from one of the notepads sitting around the post office, likely written right there. Reaper unfolds the paper, something in him settling to see the familiar handwriting.

 

_Listen asshole._

_This box is supposed to be untouched. The only person other than me that can get into it is dead, so there should be a couple dozen postcards here. Given that the last one was only sent six months ago, I know you’re checking this regularly, whoever you are._

_I want those cards back._

_They’re not for you._

_If they aren’t here by the next time I check, I will hunt you down and find you. Trust me in that I am not someone you want after you._

 

Reaper folds the paper, tucking it away absently. This is an unforeseen development. Presumably after Jesse’s departure from Overwatch, he decided to…Reaper doesn’t quite know. Tie up loose ends? Stop mourning Gabe for good?

He slips out the door, slinging his bag of cash over a shoulder as he heads for the airport.

-x-x-x-x-x-

There’s a knock at the door.

No one knows where this apartment is, so no one should be knocking. Reaper takes a moment to check his surveillance camera, sighing when he sees who’s there. Even though the camera is concealed in a carved piece of wood on the doorframe, Sombra is staring right at it, smiling and waving.

Reaper hits a button that undoes the inner bolts of the steel-cored door, growling out, “Come in,” knowing she’ll hear. He doesn’t bother to put the mask back on, Sombra saw him without it long ago.

Sombra flounces in like she owns the place, though that’s pretty much her usual behavior everywhere she goes. She settles on an armchair, daintily crossing her legs before shivering exaggeratedly. “Don’t you have any heat in this place?”

“No.”

“You’re a man of warm climates, Gabe. I don’t know what you’re doing up here in all this ice and snow.”

“Don’t call me Gabe. And if you hadn’t noticed, I’m not exactly a man, anymore.”

Sombra’s half-smile sharpens. “About that. This is a...courtesy call.”

“If it was a call, you wouldn’t be in my living room.”

“You call this a living room? _Santo dios_ , what did Talon do to you? They take away your sense of style when they took away your skin color? A couple of rugs could go a long way.”

“Sombra…”

She waves a lazy hand in the air. “Fine, fine.” She sits forward, face more serious. “I haven’t formally been hired yet, which is why I’m doing this. That and our history. There is someone who has been hiring a few hackers - none of whom have gotten anywhere, by the way - to do some digging on you.”

Reaper shrugs. “Let them.”

Sombra rolls her eyes. “Not you, you. Gabriel Reyes you. And they’re looking for evidence of you _after_ the explosion.”

He tenses. Only one person would be doing that. “Don’t let him hire you.”

“We’re friends, but not that friendly. You know my policy, anyone can hire me.”

“We’re friends?” Reaper retorts, but he almost smiles when Sombra throws an empty beer bottle at him. He catches it, setting it down gently. He glances around the place for a moment, trying to see what she sees. Maybe he should get some things, make it seem like it’s a place someone lives. That might mean that he’s here to stay, though, and he’s...not ready for that.

“What would you want, in return for turning down that job?”

She shrugs. “Hire me for something else, make up the balance.”

Reaper combs through his facial hair with his fingernails. “There’s a post office that I’d like the security footage wiped from. Stolen if it’s physically stored.”

“For how long?”

He squints at the ceiling, doing the math. “Ten years.”

Sombra snickers, at first. “Ten, hah…” she trails off at his expression. “Oh, you’re serious.”

“It has to do with the person who will try to hire you.”

She settles herself in the chair, clicking her long nails along the bare wood inlay of the armrest. “He doesn’t know you’re alive, doesn’t know you’re Reaper. But you want surveillance footage from a post office cleared.” Sombra rests her chin on a hand, nails still clicking like they’re typing on a keyboard. “Let me guess. Storage space for him, and you keep poking your nose in because you miss him? Or maybe a dropbox for something important to you both, and you don’t want him to know you’re looking. Am I getting close?”

Reaper’s face doesn’t move, other than his eyebrows slowly lowering. Sombra laughs, a tinkling sound unsuited for the dour apartment. “Don’t worry, _pobrecito_. I’ll wipe the footage.” She names a number that’s too high for what she’ll be doing for him, but not too high for a deep dive on someone’s personal information.

He gets up and goes to his bedroom, shoving half of the money from the Boston job into a plastic grocery bag. Coming out, he drops it on her lap on his way back to his chair. She digs through the contents for just a moment before nodding. No one cheats Sombra, not after hearing what she’s done to those that attempted it.

Chin back on her hand, she fixes Reaper with a look. “Where is it?”

“New Britain, Connecticut. Broad Street.”

“As soon as possible?”

Reaper hesitates. It's been most of a month since the sheet of paper. Normally he only got cards once or twice a year, but he had the feeling normal - for whatever the hell ‘normal’ was, when someone wrote cards to a dead man and the dead man actually picked them up - was over. “Next week.”

Sombra gives him a knowing look and stands, plastic bag in hand. “Do you have anything else this could be in? If it breaks open I’m not sure how I’m going to explain.”

Reaper sighs, and goes to get a reusable grocery bag.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Three nights later, Reaper slinks into the post office at four in the morning. He scanned for any unusual surveillance equipment, but nothing showed. He fingerprints the box open, and once more there’s just a piece of paper there.

 

_Gabe?_

_Are you alive?_

 

The writing is scrawled, uneven and hastily written. Reaper shoves the paper in a pocket and streams out the crack in the door, not solidifying until he’s thirty miles away at the airport. He collapses against a tree next to the parking structure - he rarely travels that far in smoke form, but he panicked. Reaper does not panic.

Jesse realizing he might be alive? Apparently that was enough.

On the plane, he pulls out his tablet and messages Sombra.

> Wipe the footage. As soon as you can.

A minute goes by, then it vibrates with her reply.

< Something light fire to your coat? I did just get a very convincing offer from a certain someone just yesterday. For more money than you gave me, in fact.

Reaper grits his teeth. He doesn’t mind Sombra’s joking most of the time - he tells himself that she doesn’t push his buttons the way Jesse did, no, that it’s definitely not weirdly comforting - but he hits a limit fast when it comes to serious matters.

> Sombra...

< Stop worrying, you got to me first. Though if his offer keeps going up, you might need to hire me for something else. I don’t normally do online protection, but I could for you.

> I’ll keep it in mind.

He would, too. He was sure Sombra could build firewalls around any of his personal data that would be the best money could buy. It wasn’t like he had much out there, being dead and working for Talon for the past ten years, but it was amazing the dumb shit that the Talon lackeys would record in the name of red tape.

Reaper tucks the tablet away, and wonders when this became his life.

-x-x-x-x-x-

He crouches on the roof of a house, feeling like an idiot for not the first time tonight.

Reaper had kept the Blackwatch email open constantly, eyes sharp for a notification. The second that one appeared, he was out the door, headed for Connecticut. There was still no new surveillance equipment in the post office and Sombra had guaranteed that all footage had been wiped, but Reaper was still wary. He wore gloves and a scarf and a hat, thankful that it was winter, and came in at three in the afternoon. Once again there was a piece of paper, and Reaper shoved it in the pocket of his jacket, not looking at it.

When he finally unfolded it, back at the airport, there was nothing on it but an address. He looked it up with every system he had access to, and called Sombra for a few more. For better or worse, it seemed to be just what it looked like: a small house outside Pueblo, Colorado.

The house was on the edge of a neighborhood, its back to the Arkansas River. The surrounding land was scrubby desert where it wasn’t water, and long-buried memories of Jesse taking Gabe around his old stomping grounds in New Mexico slowly surfaced. It wasn’t the same, but Reaper could understand why Jesse might settle here.

He spent a full day lurking in a slowly tightening circle, trying to see if it was a setup of any kind. All he got was overheated in the thin-aired sunlight and followed around by a stray dog that decided to be his friend. As Reaper perches on the roof, he can hear the dog below softly whining. Reaper hisses and bares his inhuman teeth, but the dog just looks up at him with soulful brown eyes. Reaper finally sighs and throws down a piece of protein bar, before settling back into the niche that keeps him hidden from passers by, waiting for dark.

Reaper spent a long time thinking about how he’d do this. Jesse had either figured it out or was about to, but he could come at this himself, try to control the situation. He dressed in his usual outfit, but left the ammo belts hidden outside, in reach if he needed them. He was still armed, of course, but not too obviously.

Moving silently around the outsides of the house, he finds a crack in the back door’s frame that is enough to let him in. He finds himself in a kitchen, dirty dishes sitting in the sink with a book left open on the table. He flips the cover over, curious, and rolls his eyes at seeing Elmore Leonard’s name. Typical Jesse. Moving noiselessly to the doorway, Reaper can see into the living room. Jesse is sitting in a corner of a comfortable looking couch in sweatpants and a t shirt, a thick book in one hand and a glass of something in the other. He watches for a few minutes, looking at the familiar fingers turn a page. The glass is held delicately by his prosthetic hand, a stylized skull on the forearm.

Jesse’s head is bent, but Reaper can see the threads of grey blending into the brown of his hair. He’d be - Reaper takes a minute to think. Forty one, now. Eyes moving over the man he hasn’t seen in person in a decade, Reaper’s eyes get stuck on his feet. Such a stupid thing, and yet he can’t stop looking. Jesse lived in his boots, refusing to take them off after a training exercise not long after he’d been recruited where he was kidnapped in the middle of the night and dumped out of a helicopter, wearing nothing but pajama pants and a bad attitude. He’d nearly lost a toe to frostbite, and for all the time they’d known each other afterwards, Jesse had steadfastly refused to take off his boots anywhere there could possibly be trouble.

Except at home, with Gabe. He was never sure what happened when Jesse was alone, but the only time Gabe ever saw Jesse’s bare feet was when they were locked away safe in their quarters. And now he’s seeing Jesse’s feet again, and his throat is tight, and before he knows it Reaper has smoked out and is rematerializing in the middle of the living room.

Without looking up, Jesse drops the book and pulls Peacekeeper out from under a cushion in a single movement to hold it on Reaper. He sets his glass down and looks up, eyes widening. Reaper’s gaze is locked on his face. The beard is thicker now, hair longer. There are lines at the corners of his eyes, more from his nose to his mouth. Smile lines, not that he’s doing anything like smiling now.

Reaper doesn’t move a muscle as Jesse slowly stands, taking a step over to position himself in front of the fireplace. Reaper can see several flashbangs up on the mantle, now in grabbing distance. Reaper stays still as Jesse’s eyes assess him, watching him note the lack of ammo or obvious weapons.

“I’m not goin’ to ask where you got this address, because I only ever wrote it down in connection with me one place.” Jesse’s eyes narrow as his finger flexes on the trigger. “Why have you been emptyin’ that box? How did you even get in there in the first place? Is this a Talon thing?” His eyes widen, then become cold and flat. “Did you have Gabe? Do you have him still? What are you doin’ with him?” His voice is getting louder and angrier, and Reaper knows what he’s capable of with his gun. He takes a steadying breath and raises his hands slowly.

Jesse is quiet, but he’s waiting for just one wrong move. Reaper, still moving in slow motion, reaches his right hand up to his mask. There’s a click as the releases disengage, and Jesse twitches. Reaper waits for a tense moment while Jesse calms, and pulls the mask away.

“What -” Peacemaker droops towards the floor as Jesse stares at him in shock. “Wh- are you - _Gabe_?” He steps forward, then back, not sure of what to do.

“Hey, Jesse.” Reaper isn’t sure what Jesse will make of his voice - it’s smokey and raspy and deeper than before, but Moira told him once that it was still recognizably his. Reaper takes a breath to say something else, he’s not quite sure what, but the air is forced from his lungs by the strong arms wrapped around him.

Tentatively, Reaper bends his head to where Jesse’s face is pressed into his shoulder. He sniffs, and the scent of Jesse’s hair and shampoo and a bit of the same minty soap he’s still using after all these years hits his nose, and suddenly his own arms are wrapped around Jesse’s torso.

They stay like that for what feels like forever, and Reaper curses the fact he still has his armor, his gloves on, and he can’t feel much of anything. Long minutes later, Jesse lets go and backs up. He’s not crying, but his eyes are rimmed with red.

“So you’re...Reaper.” He nods.

Jesse pinches the bridge of his nose with his fingers, closes his eyes. He opens them but doesn’t really see anything, his eyes darting back and forth as he puts things together. “We’re goin’ to have to talk about things. A lot.” Reaper nods again.

Stepping forward, Jesse reaches up for the hood. Pauses. “Can I see you?” Another nod, and Jesse pushes the hood back. He runs his fingers through Reaper’s hair, frowning as it moves oddly through his fingers. His hands move lower, tracing a cheekbone. Reaper looks into Jesse’s warm brown eyes, knowing the inhuman red that he’s seeing look at him in return. He closes them, but Jesse runs a gentle finger over an eyebrow. “Not bad. Just different.”

When he opens his eyes Jesse’s hands have shifted down, tracing the edges of the goatee, the edges of his lips. Reaper obediently opens his mouth at Jesse’s tug on his upper lip, lets him run curious fingers over the edges of teeth that are pointed where they shouldn’t be. Jesse closes his mouth, runs a finger over his sealed lips. Leans up, gives a chaste little press of lips to a mouth only a monster would own. Reaper’s mind blanks at the sensation, barely notices Jesse pulling off his gloves.

Jesse takes him apart piece by piece - gloves, coat, boots. His armor comes off, and with each layer removed Reaper feels like something has been flayed from him, leaving him with wet muscle and damp bone exposed to the world. Fabric is pulled over his head and when he can see again he’s more bare than Jesse, wearing nothing but skin and underwear.

Gentle hands move over him, touching each piece of skin that’s been revealed. Each press of fingers feels like something clicking into place, like all the loose parts he’s been carting around for a decade are finally turning into a solid form. Jesse finally moves back around to his front, one hand holding Reaper’s jaw and the other wrapped gently around the side of his neck. He waits patiently as Reaper hesitantly moves his own arms up to settle at Jesse’s waist.

“Come to bed,” he says quietly. “Just...sleep.” Reaper tentatively dips his head, and Jesse lets one hand trail down until he’s holding Reaper’s. He flicks off the light, leaving the armor scattered in the dark, and leads Reaper down the hallway. Jesse turns on the light in the bedroom and leaves Reaper there as he ducks into the attached bathroom. As Reaper listens to the sound of Jesse brushing his teeth, he looks around.

There are things that are familiar, more that are not. Pictures, many of them including Gabe. Newer ones showing Jesse with an arm around Fareeha, now all grown up and in Overwatch armor, Oxton and Genji and unfamiliar faces by their sides. There are cacti and books, two things Jesse always had around him. Little trinkets and tchotchkes from all over the world dot the shelves. Reaper recognizes only a few, finds himself wanting to know the story behind each one.

He feels Jesse come up behind him, chin hooking over his shoulder as he looks at what Reaper is examining. “Later, okay? I don’t know about you, but I’m feelin’ a bit drained after all this.”

Reaper follows as Jesse leads him to the bed, obediently gets in when the covers are flipped down. It’s the same as ever - Reaper on the left side, Jesse on the right. Muscle memory takes over once they lay down, and they tangle together comfortably, the way they have a thousand times before.

Reaper wants to think about it, about everything that just happened and what’s going to happen next, about dealing with the past ten years and what they are to each other now. He wants to talk, to tell Jesse how his cards brought him back, how they helped turn him back into a person. He wants to touch Jesse like Jesse touched him, and do so much more besides. Before he can really work through any of it, though, he’s asleep.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-

Sleep has a smell.

One wouldn’t think so, given that it’s an action that requires nothing other than laying there, but it does. He takes in a deep breath, and smells sleep. It’s musky sweat and sour breath and the hints of fabric softener in the sheets. More than that it’s the trapped air between their bodies, the skin at Jesse’s throat that’s under his lips and their hair tangling together on the pillow.

He feels out where he is, flexing the muscles along his body to take inventory. His head is tucked under Jesse’s chin, their arms slung around each other and legs stuck together with sweat. He hears unfamiliar birds, and his eyes blink open. There are large picture windows in Jesse’s bedroom, letting in dim light and birdsong. It’s early, and Jesse is still dead asleep beside him. He engages the last of his senses when he licks his lips, accidentally tracing a short line on Jesse’s throat. He tastes of salt and familiarity and love, and Jesse’s Adam's apple moves as he sleepily murmurs, “Later, darlin’.”

In a ramshackle house in Pueblo, Colorado at six in the morning, something odd happens. He still has the red eyes, he still has the sharp teeth. He's still going to turn into smoke at a moment's notice. But somehow, somehow -

Reaper fell asleep, but it’s Gabe that wakes up.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading, and happy new year


End file.
